--Alien Week--
Aliens (Director's Cut) (1986)
Please note that all "Alien Week" film reviews may contain spoilers related to both the film that is being reviewed and other films in the series.
Starring Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, Lance Henrikson, Bill Paxton, and Paul Reiser
Directed by James Cameron
Note: The Director's Cut was watched because it is the preferred cut of James Cameron.
Nearly every review of James Cameron's Aliens starts out with (or eventually gets to) the fact that while the original Alien was a pure "horror" film, the 1986 sequel falls a bit more into the "action" genre. They don't fault the production for this (in fact, this sequel is better reviewed on Rotten Tomatoes than its predecessor), but they try and make this a known fact. While I'm not going to try a debunk their take on it, I can't help but mention the fact that Aliens is a movie in which a whole bunch of people are getting killed by a whole bunch of alien life forms in quite bloody ways. Sure, these people may be holding futuristic machine guns and grenades, but they're still getting their insides gutted open. So, in conclusion, don't let that "action" genre descriptor lull you in to a false sense of security.
It's fifty-seven years after the first film and Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley -- our lone survivor from the spaceship Nostromo -- has been drifting around in space in a deep hypersleep for nearly six decades. Picked up by a salvage ship that just so happens to be piloted by her former bosses at Weyland-Yutani (you know, those creeps who wanted her to capture rather than kill the alien in the last film), Ripley finds herself in a rather angsty depression now that she's become aware that everyone she's known (including her daughter) has died in the years she's been presumed dead. [Note: This familial yearning is a concept that is made much more prevalent in the Director's Cut which gives much more needed gravitas to Ripley's emotional plight.] Ripley soon discovers that a crew of dozens of families had been sent by Weyland-Yutani back to the planet in which Ripley's initial crew first discovered the aliens in order to form a colony and now this new crew is failing to respond to calls. Ripley, Weyland-Yutani representative Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), and a dozen or so Marines venture back to the planet in order to find out what has happened to the colonizers...needless to say, those nasty aliens are going to rear their ugly heads.
James Cameron, despite his rather obnoxiously high opinion of himself, is a very solid director, well aware of what it takes to create and build tension which is key in the success of a film such as Aliens. Much like its predecessor, Cameron allows for the nerve-wracking edginess to build only to fully release once Ripley and the Marines land on the alien-inhabited planet.
Cameron, however, isn't a perfect director despite what his ego may tell him. Typical of Cameron films, Aliens has two faults that seemingly come with the territory for his films. First, he's no whiz at crafting dialog. In fact, it's probably his worst characteristic as a screenwriter. Here, it's particularly evident in the way the Marines speak to one another. There were just moments where I couldn't help but laugh and shake my head at the sheer banality of what Cameron was force-feeding the actors to spout.
This lack of believable (or interesting) dialog leads into the second problem which is somewhat typical of Cameron films -- the acting isn't always top notch. While Weaver is great as is a slimy Paul Reiser in a rather understated "villain" role, nearly all the Marines are so stereotypical "ooh-rah!" over-the-top that I couldn't help but be taken out of the "realism" the movie tries to create. Bill Paxton, in particular, is really awful, hamming it up in nearly every single scene. Cameron also, unfortunately, fails to get a good performance from young Carrie Henn in her first (and only) cinematic role. As Newt, a young girl found by Ripley in the colony after they land, Henn just never inhabited the character to me...but I'm probably being a bit too harsh on the young gal.
It's because of these issues that Aliens doesn't quite match the excellence of Alien even though Cameron's film is actually a bit better paced than its predecessor. Still, these two films were wonderful franchise starters...it's just a shame that future films couldn't live up to their levels.
It's fifty-seven years after the first film and Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley -- our lone survivor from the spaceship Nostromo -- has been drifting around in space in a deep hypersleep for nearly six decades. Picked up by a salvage ship that just so happens to be piloted by her former bosses at Weyland-Yutani (you know, those creeps who wanted her to capture rather than kill the alien in the last film), Ripley finds herself in a rather angsty depression now that she's become aware that everyone she's known (including her daughter) has died in the years she's been presumed dead. [Note: This familial yearning is a concept that is made much more prevalent in the Director's Cut which gives much more needed gravitas to Ripley's emotional plight.] Ripley soon discovers that a crew of dozens of families had been sent by Weyland-Yutani back to the planet in which Ripley's initial crew first discovered the aliens in order to form a colony and now this new crew is failing to respond to calls. Ripley, Weyland-Yutani representative Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), and a dozen or so Marines venture back to the planet in order to find out what has happened to the colonizers...needless to say, those nasty aliens are going to rear their ugly heads.
James Cameron, despite his rather obnoxiously high opinion of himself, is a very solid director, well aware of what it takes to create and build tension which is key in the success of a film such as Aliens. Much like its predecessor, Cameron allows for the nerve-wracking edginess to build only to fully release once Ripley and the Marines land on the alien-inhabited planet.
Cameron, however, isn't a perfect director despite what his ego may tell him. Typical of Cameron films, Aliens has two faults that seemingly come with the territory for his films. First, he's no whiz at crafting dialog. In fact, it's probably his worst characteristic as a screenwriter. Here, it's particularly evident in the way the Marines speak to one another. There were just moments where I couldn't help but laugh and shake my head at the sheer banality of what Cameron was force-feeding the actors to spout.
This lack of believable (or interesting) dialog leads into the second problem which is somewhat typical of Cameron films -- the acting isn't always top notch. While Weaver is great as is a slimy Paul Reiser in a rather understated "villain" role, nearly all the Marines are so stereotypical "ooh-rah!" over-the-top that I couldn't help but be taken out of the "realism" the movie tries to create. Bill Paxton, in particular, is really awful, hamming it up in nearly every single scene. Cameron also, unfortunately, fails to get a good performance from young Carrie Henn in her first (and only) cinematic role. As Newt, a young girl found by Ripley in the colony after they land, Henn just never inhabited the character to me...but I'm probably being a bit too harsh on the young gal.
It's because of these issues that Aliens doesn't quite match the excellence of Alien even though Cameron's film is actually a bit better paced than its predecessor. Still, these two films were wonderful franchise starters...it's just a shame that future films couldn't live up to their levels.
The RyMickey Rating: B+
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